


the harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun

by cydinium



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Married Couple, Multi, Slice of Life, Trans Akaashi Keiji, akaashi has baby fever - the fic, hints of teenage drama in flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cydinium/pseuds/cydinium
Summary: Wherein Keiji contemplates on the life he leads with Koutarou, and some important choices to be made along the way.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	the harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun

**Author's Note:**

> written half because i needed my own fix of very specific and niche bokuaka, half because my girlfriend needed something to cheer her up. it was sort of written in a hurry and i tried to edit it as fast as i could, but if i come back and revise it don't be too surprised.
> 
> tumblr @ rhamnetines pls talk to me about bokuaka
> 
> 01/28 edit; fixed some minor typos and format!

+

Keiji looks around the near empty apartment, still cramped with all the boxes ready to be loaded onto the moving truck, the curtains his mother had so lovingly gifted him when he and Koutarou had moved in together and no pictures on the walls - from back when he was still Fukurodani’s setter, to his own wedding about three years ago. He had been fresh out of college, still doing odd jobs here and there, but Koutarou had insisted on them tying the knot - _for your security, and mine_ , he had said. That didn’t change the fact that Koutarou was all the way in Osaka playing for the Jackals most of the time, while Keiji was in Tokyo stuck in a job he had learned to respect, but never quite love.

It wasn’t the most ideal setup, but neither could complain too much. Koutarou playing for the Jackals meant long-term benefits - the pay was good, the team popular enough that others would seek Koutarou if he didn’t renew his contract, and there were familiar faces as well. A little sacrifice was definitely worth it, and it’s not like their relationship was suffering much because of it. It wasn’t easy either, but they could afford to see each other often enough that it wasn’t exactly terrible. The lack of someone to return to everyday was starting to wear them down though, the lack of a warm body next to their own every morning.

So that’s how Keiji found himself in his current predicament. He hesitated at first, he hadn’t been working long in that shounen magazine editorial but it wouldn’t hurt to ask to be transferred to the Osaka branch, would it? Udai-san had been sorely disappointed given how well they ended up working together, though he eventually agreed to write a recommendation letter so that the transfer would be approved more quickly. It didn’t help that he was definitely one of the younger editors in that department - he was approaching twenty six; Koutarou, twenty seven already. Married for three years, and still hadn’t gotten to properly live together. They certainly knew how to go about their way around the other, what little domesticity they could get here and there enough to get a taste out of it. And that’s why when his request to be transferred to Osaka was approved the move was planned almost overnight.

+

Back when Keiji and Koutarou had just gotten married the loneliness was almost overwhelming. All things considered, Keiji thinks he had it easier - his family was all in Tokyo, what little of it he has, parents and that’s about it, and friends not only his own but some of Koutarou’s as well; he’s never been exactly close to Kuroo-san, but he acknowledges that he’s his husband’s best friend, and Kuroo’s own partner Kozume Kenma had become a closer friend in the past few years. When Keiji and Kenma had been on their final year of high school the loneliness over not having their best friends slash boyfriends had driven them closer. Most of the Fukurodani alumni from their generation were in Tokyo as well, so although Keiji felt lonely he wasn’t alone.

Couldn’t say the same for Koutarou though, all the way in Osaka with his friends and family and husband in Tokyo. He gets well along with his teammates - Atsumu in particular had become quite chummy with Koutarou - but that’s not quite the same as their closest friends in Tokyo getting together pretty much every weekend after work to drink and laugh their stupid workplace problems away. Koutarou does go drinking with the Jackals occasionally after particularly successful games, but by his own admission it just wasn’t the same as trying to drink Konoha under the table.

(Historically, it is Keiji who ends up in drinking competitions - and losing.)

That’s why Keiji is surprised when, come Saturday midday Koutarou shows up in their shared apartment, had taken the shinkansen straight after practice - left his bag ready before practice earlier that day! - to Tokyo, with a beagle puppy in his arms. To be fair, Koutarou rushing to Tokyo after Saturday practice was nothing new, so the extra half hour Koutarou took to get home was slightly surprising. Keiji is quite good at putting two and two together though, so that extra half hour was likely spent picking up the - frankly adorable - dog. Koutarou later admitted that he had traveled all the way from Osaka to Tokyo with the dog, tiny thing looked excited during the whole trip, pictures to prove it included.

The explanation Koutarou had quickly blurted out was that Keiji must be feeling lonely all by himself in their apartment in Tokyo, and since neither of them are cat people a dog seemed like the best idea even though cats are lower maintenance but still, anything to keep Keiji company hopefully he’s not mad- and dear lord, how could Keiji even be mad? For starters because as a child he had insisted to his parents that he wanted a dog but alas, due to their jobs and busy hours having a pet was simply out of question. Occasionally when hanging out with classmates to do homework he would pay attention to the house pets, even more so when said pets were dogs. Despite what people might think - or because of it, who knows - Keiji adores dogs, far above and beyond cats (sorry, Kozume). Maybe it’s their energy or how easy-going most breeds are, wishes he could be like that, or perhaps how they low-key remind him of his husband dearest. A riddle for the ages, alas.

The dog stays because Keiji could never turn it away, busy schedules or not, and the little fur-ball of love is named Mocha.

+

Although Kuroo-san is most definitely Koutarou’s friend, Keiji is eternally thankful that he’s among the people helping him move. Konoha, Washio and Suzumeda are also loitering around the small, one bedroom one ambient apartment, Mocha trotting behind Suzumeda because ever since Mocha was brought home Suzumeda keeps dog treats in her bag whenever she visits, and because Mocha is a little manipulative baby that knows how to get what she wants she does that little thing of droopy eyes and ears that to anyone none the wiser would make them think _oh, poor puppy, must be famished!_. Keiji is no fool - his canine companion knows how to use her charms to get what she wants and- well. Mocha is a smart girl. Keiji adores her. He also keeps telling Suzumeda to stop feeding her treats whenever she is visiting because it’s hard enough to keep Mocha in a decent weight, look Keiji did his research, beagles _have_ to be kept a certain weight lest they get sick- being a dog parent is hard. That is all.

Sarukui, Komi and Shirofuku had excused themselves from helping Keiji move because of miscellaneous reasons, how he has come to understand their reasons. Sarukui and Komi would be out of town that weekend, and Shirofuku was taking care of her sick mother much to Suzumeda’s dismay. Everyone makes fun of Koutarou and Keiji for acting like an old married couple even back in high school and before they even realized their feelings for each other, but Suzumeda and Shirofuku had been toying around each other for an even longer time - Keiji does not have the details, thought it would be too intimate for him to ask, as is his own relationship and its details - but Koutarou told him that they’ve known each other longer than anyone in their generation of Fukurodani’s volleyball team.

As for Onaga, Keiji admits he’s not always the best at keeping up with him, but he had said that he’d be happy to help them anytime, just not this precise weekend. Konoha elbowed him when he’d read out loud Onaga’s text, something about how Onaga is finally seeing a girl, hopefully this time it works out for him, _poor guy Keiji do you remember how that girl broke his heart_ -. To be completely honest, Keiji doesn’t quite understand women, never did, never will. In his own experience he has never liked them in _that_ way, even though the rest of the Fukurodani alumni will insist that no, Akaashi Keiji (excuse you, he’s been _Bokuto_ Keiji for years already!) is not gay - he is, in fact, Bokutosexual.

Since his transfer was approved the previous month Keiji has been working nearly nonstop into packaging his and Koutarou’s things, every day after work and taking Mocha on her daily walk. The weekends prior to what Konoha has dubbed as “The Move(TM)” Koutarou helped as much as he could, but Keiji insisted that he went to lie down or do something else, that he could sort this out on his own. However, Koutarou, being the person that he is, packaged whatever was non-fragile because he knows his limits, and settled onto keeping Mocha busy so that Keiji could package their plates, glasses and cups. That is not to say that is all they did, of course - absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in Keiji’s own words after several beers, _horny_. Kuroo oftentimes tries to pry details away from Koutarou, but whatever happens inside Keiji and Koutarou’s bedroom, stays there.

(Not because they are particularly freaky, if at all, but because Keiji gets all embarrassed thinking about the things he says and does when he, uhm, has alone time with his husband.)

+

When Keiji’s back hits the mattress he knows he’s a goner, Koutarou’s hands roaming his sides, trying to touch everything at once. It has been a long time since they got to do this, what with Koutarou being busy with professional volleyball player stuff. It’s not that Keiji is unaware of what Koutarou does, he has even been present for some of said games, but when it gets in between him and his husband’s dick, it starts making him mad. And it’s not his goal to paint himself as some sort of sex starved freak, far from it. Some people would even say that he can last a little too long without sex, especially for someone who’s allegedly happily married.

  
(‘Some people’ being Kuroo Tetsurou, of course. Fucking asshole.)

It is indeed true that his sex life due to the nature of his husband’s job sometimes suffers, but whenever Koutarou is home they make up for it. Like now, for example, with Keiji trying so hard to get the other’s shirt off while simultaneously trying to take off his own pants. A part of him, deep inside his brain, reminds him that they need a condom, that it is not a safe day, that no matter how much Keiji would love to make a father out of Bokuto Koutarou the time isn’t right yet. It isn’t even something they have talked about in depth yet - they talked about it briefly when they got engaged, Keiji hadn’t even gotten his degree then, had labeled it as something that would come with time but back then they had been too young for. Keiji still thinks they’re too young for it, with him being twenty three and Koutarou barely twenty five. They don’t even have the time for a baby, as much as they would love one.

Love? Keiji doesn’t know when he came to that conclusion. He likes children though, but _love_. Will have to think about it further - archives it for later and decides that he would rather get fucked now, think about babies later. Never mind that one usually brings the other. Details. Instead he pushes Koutarou back a little, removes Koutarou’s shirt, his own shirt and pants, grabs a condom and lube from the nightstand and brings Koutarou back down. He can feel how his husband grinds his hips against his crotch, legs spread wide around Koutarou’s waist.

A baby will eventually be in the plans, but not for now.

+

As it turns out, Keiji and Koutarou won’t exactly live in Osaka per say. The city is lovely, don’t get him wrong - Keiji has been many times in Osaka and loves the city, loves the food, loves the sights. More than that though, Keiji loves his husband and would follow him to the ends of planet Earth and beyond - with only mild complaining. The truth is that thanks to Koutarou’s very _generous_ salary as a professional volleyball player for a V League team he can afford a house in Nishinomiya, close to Ashiya. Not even renting a house in Nishinomiya, but actually buying a house there. At first Keiji had been apprehensive - the fact that Koutarou bought a house without asking him first had bugged him beyond human understanding, but after a while, after a full two weeks without sex because he was _that_ mad, he made peace with it and took it as just another thing Koutarou did out of love for him.

Now, Akaashi Keiji loves Osaka, but he’s not well-versed in it and the surrounding cities. What he does know, however, is that Nishinomiya, especially the area close to Ashiya, is for the wealthy. He’s not a stranger to living in the nicer parts of a city - his own parents had been from well-accommodated families, both had jobs that paid extremely well, while living under their kind but somewhat aloof eyes it had always been in nice neighborhoods in Tokyo. That does not mean his family was particularly wealthy, or rich at all. He knows it is the same for Koutarou - Fukurodani is after all a private academy. Koutarou’s parents had both worked, had sent their three children to Fukurodani and yet, because of their children’s age differences they never were _in_ Fukurodani at the same time. Probably for the best.

(Keiji adores his sisters in law, don’t get him wrong. Koutarou’s oldest sister is in her late thirties and feels the need to give him life advice every time she sees him, tells him to consider carefully every little thing he does because when he’s her age he might regret a lot. The other sister in law, somewhere in between early to mid thirties, feels the need to baby him instead. Even when nothing is wrong she tells him that everything will be alright, that should he need anything, if Koutarou is being an idiot he should tell her. Things like that make Keiji wish he had siblings that could engage with Koutarou in that kind of banter. He remembers being seven years old and asking his parents why he didn’t have siblings, if he could have one, but the answer had been an absolute negative. Sad.)

Point is, Nishinomiya - close to Ashiya, do note it! - is not a run of the mill place. Koutarou clearly opened his heart and bank account for him - well, for _them_ , to be fair. The house is lovely in its mix of traditional and new, with big windows from top to bottom and lacquered wood floors, white walls and open, spacious concept. Hardly any separation in the first floor, kitchen and dining room and living room in one place, the sun enveloping the place in a haze during the early morning and, thanks to how many windows the goddamn place has, said haze lasts until well past lunchtime. Their bedroom also had the same light streaming through the windows, chose to keep the translucent curtains so that they could wake up with the sun.

At least that was the plan when they had been unloading the many boxes from the moving truck, Mocha happy to explore the yard, up until they woke up the next morning at six o’clock all tired because they went to sleep late, Mocha at the feet of their mattress because the bed wasn’t properly assembled yet, don’t even know if they can assemble it by themselves. After such a morning which, to be completely honest, wasn’t _that_ bad they resolved to get blackout curtains so that they could sleep in on weekends because, even though they are finally going to be living together, it doesn’t mean that their work hours suddenly changed. Keiji is still expected at an office early in the morning five times a week, and Koutarou is still expected at practice _six_ times a week. Thankfully Koutarou doesn’t have to take a shinkansen to Tokyo from Osaka that will take at least two and a half hours.

The travel time from Nishinomiya to Osaka is not bad at all, especially now that Koutarou _finally_ learned to drive and got a car. At most it will take him half an hour, probably less. Maybe more if he drops off Keiji at his own workplace like he insists he will (he won’t, their schedules don’t match up). Ideally they would be living in Osaka itself, but Koutarou liked the house in Nishinomiya recommended by the real state agent and - in his own words- thought it’d be a nice house to raise a _family_ in. It’s been years since they last talked about the C word topic - children, more specifically - and Keiji had thought that’d be the end of it. Something that sounded nice at the moment but that was as far as it went.

It gets Keiji thinking on the two extra rooms in the house, one way too small to be a proper bedroom but cozy enough for an office, which he will soon get to work on. The other bedroom, a lot bigger than his eventual office, sits empty and almost waiting to be occupied by someone. Keiji doesn’t really think of his own body much at all nowadays, much less has talked about it with anyone before, not even his husband. Koutarou has never asked either - when Keiji joined the Fukurodani team he mentioned it to avoid any _undesirable_ situations, and that was that. No judgment, no pity in his new teammates eyes, only understanding and a promise to not overstep. It brings Keiji to his current predicament.

He’s perfectly aware there’s several ways he and Koutarou could go about this - adopting a child is always an option, there’s surrogacy as well, although not quite the same fostering is also something they could do but- Keiji doesn’t really think those are for them. He doesn’t have the same problems with his body as he did when he was a teenager and trying to hide any curve that testosterone shots could not, purposefully trying to speak with a voice lower than his natural tone. It’s not as if he’s suddenly a super confident person who could go through a pregnancy with no mental repercussions at all - rather, because of the social ‘net’, so to speak, that he has he thinks it could very well be a viable option. Friends, family, his husband - he knows that his loved ones would be with him every step of the way. Bokuto Keiji is _loved_.

(It doesn’t slip past Keiji that, even for people who have no qualms with transgender men having their own kids the good ol’ way, they tend to picture smaller, daintier guys. Not someone like Keiji who’s well above 180cm tall.)

The timing would be fine, too. Even though Keiji has come to _respect_ his job it doesn’t mean he particularly enjoys it, years after. Going on leave wouldn’t bother him at all, as much of a workaholic he can be. If he were to lose his job after returning, he thinks, it wouldn’t be the end of the world either. Keiji likes his independence, likes having his own money to get whatever he wants, to invite Koutarou out for dinner on weekends when he’s home even though he knows perfectly well Koutarou can pay for his own food. The point is, after much debate inside his own precious little head, is that losing his job so soon after finally getting the transfer to the Osaka branch, would be fine. Far from ideal, but it would be fine. At the very least, any hypothetical child he has with Koutarou would be well-cared for, no matter what happens between them - although Keiji loathes to think about it, sometimes couples do get into arguments they cannot back down from, arguments that get uglier and uglier until there is no going back.

+

Koutarou had been twenty one, almost twenty two. Keiji, twenty.

It had started out as one of the many evenings they could afford to have together with their busy schedules and _lives_ in general. Koutarou had not been playing for the MSBY Black Jackals just yet, but he was still playing for a team outside of Tokyo either way. Keiji, for his own part, was trying to get through college as quickly as possible with as little psychological damage - not really an exaggeration. Their relationship had been going well, mostly. Loneliness was still a common problem, though not an unsolvable one. Video calls were already commonplace by 2015, texting whenever they were available kept them updated on the other, and Keiji would take the trip to Hiroshima. Koutarou playing for the HT Thunderstorms meant taking actual flights to see each other, but with the salary of a newly started V.League player Koutarou could afford it.

They had been in Koutarou’s apartment in Hiroshima when it went down. Keiji avoids revisiting that memory because it is far from a pleasant one, would rather remember nicer things he has lived with his husband, back then just boyfriend. Still, the situation gives him insight on how to solve problems with Koutarou when things get tense. They are not perfect people, and despite the image they give off, they are far from a perfect couple too.

That’s how they find themselves in what can only be described as a shouting match, harsh words being said because feeling hurt is all too natural when who might as well be the one true love of your life is all the way on the other side of the country. Doubts appear, and so do other little things that usually go unnoticed between them, like how Koutarou is physically incapable of not putting his feet on the coffee table, how he presses the toothpaste tube from the middle leaving some at the bottom that will stay there because pressing it upwards is _hard_ , how he leaves plates from lunch to be washed with the dinner ones - little things that Keiji wouldn’t mind most of the time, but now that he has just come off midterms, still has to work on a group project due the end of semester - and thus, it goes unneeded to say that it is quite the big project - and had fought with his parents just the previous day because they still don’t agree with his major of choice.

Keiji is far from perfect, too. He’s all too aware of his own faults. He forgets to water what little plants he has - or had, really, only the succulent in the kitchen remains - because of how busy he tends to be, leaves the bed unmade in the morning because he just _doesn’t have time_ to fix it before running for class, which he knows for a fact that it drives Koutarou nuts, and the worst offender among all the things he does is how he neglects oftentimes to clean out his fridge. His boyfriend never judged him per see, but Koutarou would make a disappointed face whenever he visited because _come on, Ji, how long has this container with yakisoba been in your fridge_ , and Keiji wouldn’t be able to answer, because he lives off instant ramen and doesn’t even remember the last time he ate yakisoba.

The point is that, neither are perfect. That brings them to what eventually went down.

The comment he makes sounds annoyed, especially for someone who would most of the time be quite content to be pressed together on the sofa watching whatever sitcom they find on Netflix with his loved one. And yet, Koutarou has - as usual - his feet up on the coffee table, and maybe Keiji is coming down with something because the smell from the kitchen, from the plates they used for lunch and left in the sink is bugging him a little too much. He tries to push it aside because he hasn’t seen his boyfriend in weeks, but then Koutarou notices he’s feeling and acting off, he starts feeling _and_ acting off as well, and then it escalates.

It proceeds with the aforementioned shouting match that Keiji does not like to revisit. Things they don’t really mean were said, but the worst part is that some of them they did. Akaashi Keiji wouldn’t be able to think of a time after meeting him where he wasn’t crazy in love with Bokuto Koutarou, where the air wasn’t knocked out of his lungs when he looked at Fukurodani’s ace. He’s also all too aware that the love of his life has his faults, numerous ones, and some of them he can deal with, some of them he usually can deal with, some others take a lot more work. After all is said and done silence threatens to asphyxiate them in the apartment, no matter how open the windows and curtains are, cold wind blowing inside. Keiji does whatever an emotionally not quite mature young man, hurt because of love, would do, and that is pack what little he brought to Hiroshima, grab his things, and leave for the airport. His flight isn’t due for a good five more hours, but he’d rather be anywhere else for those hours rather than in his boyfriend’s apartment.

Koutarou doesn’t stop him from going.

+

They go for a full month without talking, no communication whatsoever. Keiji buries himself in his schoolwork. Koutarou brings his team to victory in all the games scheduled for that month. Their friends ask what happened, but neither will say anything. Neither is willing to apologize just yet, pride riding high in their hearts.

Neither will admit they were in the wrong.

+

When the second month of no communication starts, Keiji gets a message from one of his college friends asking him if he wants to go out, knows that he has been feeling down and thinks it would do him some good to grab a drink - or a few. Keiji avoids alcohol like the plague because his tolerance never caught up to the levels expected of a tired college student. More than once friends have had to carry him home while deeply intoxicated, crying because god fucking dammit, he’s so deeply in love with whom he calls now ‘redacted’, how is he supposed to hold all that love inside him? His heart is not big enough for that, it swells up three sizes up and threatens to burst out of his chest because of the love it holds.

‘Holds’, said in present tense, because although Keiji is not above thinking he’d be up for getting screwed by other guys like the promiscuous little shit he can be, Bokuto Koutarou - excuse him, he means ‘ _redacted_ ’ - is still the only person he can ever see himself loving as much as he currently does. They _are_ however clearly on a break with no sign on the horizon of properly getting back together, even though they haven’t technically broken up at all. It has stopped Keiji from going out the past month or so, from putting himself out there in the market so to speak. Still, this friend-more-like-acquaintance is inviting him out, and if Keiji doesn’t do it now, when will he?

Keiji finds himself in a pub with this friend-more-like-acquaintance and several other of this guy’s friends and surprisingly he has a really good time. Like a _really_ good one, far more than he thought he would. He has a beer but limits himself to that, knows that the moment he has one more drink it won’t be just one more drink. He dances a little bit with the people he went out with, some other guys he has never before seen in his life. He’s forever thankful this friend of his knows which way he swings to, swings that way himself, and brought him somewhere safe. If Keiji truly wanted to get laid this night, when he’s finally letting loose, he definitely could. He’s far from vain, but Akaashi Keiji is alas all too aware that he’s considered attractive by the general public. Back in high school during Valentine’s Day he used to get confessions by the dozen, ended up rejecting so many girls it nearly drove Konoha insane.

(The one confession he waited for never came in that date, wouldn’t come until March before his third year at Fukurodani started, when the third years graduated and Bokuto-san gave him his second pin. Truly a magical moment.)

Instead the guilt is too much over going out without Koutarou, excuses himself with his friend and leaves the pub, goes home to bury himself in his pillow and cry some more.

+

Koutarou arrives at his apartment the next day - he didn’t renew his contract with the HT Thunderstorms, will look for a team closer to Tokyo. He’s sorry. Keiji is sorry too.

+

He moved almost right at the start of the new year, early-to-mid January ruthless in its cold weather with hardly any snow at all. If Keiji could he’d rather stay inside all day with a cup of coffee reading, but he knows that’s hardly his reality, that’d be the one of American influencers that honestly add nothing to society at all. Instead he grabs the bag with his laptop and takes the train to Osaka each morning - his new mangaka is a young woman, probably around his age, still unsure of her ideas and thinks it’s some sort of miracle her psychological horror and mahou shoujo manga got green-lighted. Keiji is surprised with her work, thinks that she has far more potential than she lets on, and as her editor it is his job to bring out that potential, to help her organize her ideas - all within timely deadlines. He still can’t say that he loves his job, but maybe being closer to his husband makes everything more bearable.

The topic of children - children? Has it always been plural? - still hasn’t been brought up, mostly because Koutarou is being wrung out this season by his coach. As one of the star players, the Jackals rely on him more than ever, especially now that Hinata has left the team. It was nice having him around, occasionally arriving with Koutarou to their apartment in Tokyo. Hinata could have visited his family all the way in Sendai, but Tokyo is nice too, and sometimes he didn’t feel like staying with Kageyama - Keiji dares not ask as it is not his problem, nor is he _that_ close to Hinata that he can just ask if he’s having trouble with his boyfriend. He guesses that not everyone gets married as young as he did - all things considered, given their age, Keiji is surprised it has worked out this well so far, distance aside.

Children remain in the back of his head though, makes him gaze longingly at children on the train to and from work, give a second glance to the baby care aisle at the supermarket whenever he is grocery shopping - he’s sure Koutarou noticed too, but he hasn’t brought it up. Koutarou is far more perceptive than people give him credit for - if he thinks they aren’t ready for it yet then that’s likely why he hasn’t brought it up. There is also the option that Koutarou thinks they’re okay with Mocha as their dog-child, nosy little brat that she is. Since Koutarou brought her home already a few years ago she has caught them in the act several times - it’s almost like Mocha has an alert for when they’re trying to be intimate, and needs to sabotage it at all costs.

Keiji supposes that’s how a baby would behave to some extent - no more naked Sundays, no more fucking like wild animals against the kitchen counters or being able to take showers together that would inevitably lead to something more. Though again, Mocha starts scratching the bathroom’s door whenever both are inside and taking too long. Sometimes Keiji thinks his husband gave him an actual human baby disguised as a cute dog with droopy ears and even droopier eyes. That’s when it clicks for him.

All this time both of them have been taking good care of Mocha, Keiji more so than Koutarou because she was all the way in Tokyo with him, but whenever his husband was home he’d take over the chores that come with having a beagle puppy because, as Keiji had eloquently put back then, _beagles need special care, Bokuto-san, did you know they have a really intense sense of smell and they will eat anything on sight? They need at least one hour of exercise every day, and because of their ears after a bath they’re far more likely to get infections, and they need to be bathed once per week!_ Point is, Keiji wouldn’t admit it but he does treat Mocha like a baby, no matter how much he tries to play tough with the little sack of manipulative love. He doesn’t mean to imply that taking care of an actual human child would be the same as a dog, far from it, but they have done a good job so far, especially now that they’re under the same roof. A baby could work.

But then Keiji chickens out when he’s about to ask Koutarou about it, and the topic gets shelved once again.

+

Back when Keiji had still been _Akaashi_ Keiji in his final year of high school he had not only grown closer to Kozume Kenma, but also somewhat to Tsukishima Kei. He will be the first to admit that interpersonal relationships aren’t his strongest suit, but that perhaps is why he and Tsukishima had drifted together during the Fukurodani Academy training camp. It’s not like they were suddenly best friends or anything, but with Bokuto-san and Kuroo-san having already graduated, and Kozume not being of much help, late night practice often ran between the two of them, sometimes Hinata joining them. It wasn’t the same without the former captains of Fukurodani and Nekoma, that’s for certain, but it wasn’t bad at all.

That’s why Keiji finds himself surprised when Tsukishima asks him in surprising un-Tsukishima fashion if he could lend an ear, because he doesn’t know who else would be willing to listen. At first Keiji thinks of the other second year Karasuno middle blocker, the one with the - frankly quite cute - freckles, but perhaps given how close he and Tsukishima are is precisely why the blonde didn’t go to him. Keiji doesn’t claim to know or sometimes care at all what goes on in people’s lives. Nonetheless he agrees to listen to Tsukishima because what else is he supposed to do? He might not be able to give stellar advice, but he surely can listen - and that’s what Tsukishima asked him to do, anyway, didn’t ask for advice.

Keiji gets a knot on his throat when Tsukishima confesses that he and Yamaguchi had what some people, including them, would label a _scare_. He’s familiar with what Tsukishima means, although he can’t say he has ever gone through that - he and Bokuto-san might be dating since March, when the former third years finally graduated, but they have never been, _uh_ , intimate. Not yet at least. Keiji is after all a teenager and that comes with a rush of hormones out of whack, exacerbated further by HRT because god damn does testosterone leave him feeling needing something, would love to do all sorts of dirty things with his boyfriend, but Tsukishima doesn’t need to know that. Wouldn’t provide any useful information anyway.

Apparently it ended in nothing at all, or so far they hope it has, because Tsukishima wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he got his boyfriend pregnant in their second year of high school. It really, really was an accident, usually they’re careful beyond human perception, but this one time something neither can explain happened and Yamaguchi hasn’t gotten his period yet - it was due last Monday, and it is Saturday already. Keiji knows that a missed period can be fatal and make you feel miserable, but he’s already started HRT so he’s not too worried when his own doesn’t arrive at all some months. And like, he’s not sexually active - _yet!_ \- so what would he have to worry about, anyway?

(His mother often chides him, gynecologist as she is. _It can mean that many things are going wrong, Keiji. A period, as annoying as it is, is a sign of a healthy body. Blah blah blah._ )

Keiji stays quiet while Tsukishima talks, occasionally nods or hums, asks for clarification on a small few things the blonde says, but otherwise lets him talk. They are outside the gym, taking in fresh air after practice ran late. It makes him feel a little out of place, because he truly cannot help Tsukishima and Yamaguchi in any way. What is he even supposed to say? _Wow, hope you two sort it out!_ , or maybe _It wouldn’t be that bad, would it?_. Because Keiji knows that right now, in his life, no matter how much he’s in love with his boyfriend, a child would be a disaster. An absolute, terrible, life-wrecking disaster. Must be even worse for his kouhai, with that logic.

Once Tsukishima is done speaking however he does that little smile he does whenever he’s either being sarcastic or insincere, mutters a “Thanks for listening, Akaashi-senpai,” and takes his leave for the showers before going to sleep. It is the final day of the training camp as well - the other teams will be leaving early in the morning the next day, a long road ahead for Karasuno going back to Sendai. Whatever happens, Keiji thinks, he hopes those two will be able to sort it out. It would be a pity of they had to quit volleyball, nay, possibly even school because of an accident that should have never happened to begin with.

The next morning he goes back home as well, though it is a lot closer compared to the other teams from other parts of Tokyo, not to mention Karasuno. The previous year he used to take the metro with the other third years, his own stop being somewhere in the middle - he’d get off the metro with Konoha and walk a few streets with him before they had to part ways, going in opposite directions. Nowadays, Keiji takes the metro alone and walks the rest of the way home alone too - Onaga and Anahori are still in the team, but Onaga lives close to the school so he decides to walk, and Anahori catches a bus ride home. Keiji isn’t close to any of the other second years, and much less the new first year members of the team. They respect him as their captain, sure, but he’s never been able to inspire as much passion in them as Bokuto-san did. Onaga does well enough as vice-captain, they get along just fine, but nothing is quite the same without the boy he compared to a star.

Later that day, when the moon has risen in the sky and the _actual_ stars twinkle under the summer heat, Keiji gets a text message from Tsukishima that reads, _yamaguchi got his period. we will be ok. thanks._. If those two are okay, then surely he will be too.

+

Koutarou brings up The Topic(TM) around mid-March, much to Keiji’s surprise. Apparently one of the older members of the Jackals is having a baby - was it Meian? Keiji knows the Jackals, but he can’t always remember which one is which beyond Koutarou, Atsumu-san and Sakusa-san, Hinata notwithstanding because he left the Jackals some months ago. He guesses he knows Myaa-sam too, who might as well be a honorary MSBY Black Jackals member. Summarizing, one of the older Jackals is having a baby, and it got Koutarou thinking about the whole thing. It’s not a fully structured idea - that has to come from both of them - but he presents it as something that could happen if Keiji wants it to. He doesn’t mention a method, probably thinking that it should be left up to Keiji, what he is comfortable with, and what he isn’t.

That has been a constant from the moment they met, more so since they got together. Koutarou goes out of his way to make him feel comfortable, not only when it comes to the obvious like sex, but intimacy in general. He doesn’t go as far as asking about every little touch, if Keiji suddenly getting his ass slapped whenever he leans down to pick something up is any clue, but he still asks if he can remove Keiji’s shirt whenever things get steamy or asks if he can brush his teeth while Keiji is showering, curse their western style bathroom. It was the only thing neither quite liked about their house, having grown up in traditional Japanese houses - and the thing is, their house looks traditional from the _outside_ , but it has been renovated beyond recognition on the inside, follows trends from the west that neither Keiji or Koutarou understand or _like_. Still, they love the house, have no plans to move.

That poetic waxing on what they like or not about their current living place has not much to do - at least not directly - with the topic at hand. That is not to say it is completely unrelated; if they go through with having a kid they have the space, Keiji has already claimed the smallest room on the second floor as his office and decided to paint the extra room white, for no other reason than it is a perfectly valid color to paint an extra room that currently sits empty, neutral that could serve perfectly well for any purpose he might give that room. Totally not because he saw some pictures of nurseries with white walls that looked absolutely _exquisite_ and all he could do about it was paint the room. Bokuto Keiji deals with his frustrations in what little ways he can.

And that, still doesn’t solve anything at all. Koutarou doesn’t take it further than mentioning that Meian - it was Meian, right? - will get a visit from the stork by the end of the year, and that it would be lovely if they could be in that same position whenever they are ready for that. It does bother Keiji a little that it drops the responsibility of bringing it up again to sort it out on him - he knows why Koutarou does it, but it doesn’t mean he’s completely happy with it, even if it is the most comfortable choice for both of them.

+

Later that night Keiji finds himself underneath Koutarou, moaning against his ear as he gets fucked to hell and back - or perhaps to heaven and back? Given that he feels as if he has ascended to the land of God or whatever it is that Christians say, Keiji has no idea, he feels too good. His knees bracket Koutarou’s waist and keep him pressed close as he pistons in and out. In the haze of sex and whatever else it is people feel in those moments he even forgot to take off his glasses, now they’re all askew in his face and he can’t bother to take them off, not when his eyes are screwed shut and his hands scratch Koutarou’s back. Not too long ago Kozume and him had been talking about their sex lives because the other is the only person they’d be able to talk about such a topic. Back in their final year of high school, in fact, Kozume had bragged to him that he lost his virginity first - to which Keiji promptly felt jealous about but promptly didn’t reply because _fuck you, Kozume_.

Why would Keiji even think about Kozume Kenma while he’s having sex with his husband, you ask? Well, that is because Kozume was willing to bet he has boring, straight people sex with Koutarou - meaning of course all they do is missionary and that’s that. Now Keiji will have to be honest, his sex life with Koutarou is far from the most interesting one could find; they stick to the basics for the most part because it works very well for them. _Very_ well. No joke. He will however admit that sometimes he’d like to try out new things, but come on, just the sight of Bokuto Koutarou would be able to get him off on a normal day.

If Keiji was bolder, if he was any braver, the things he is not because no matter how much Koutarou tells him he’s his world being in the spotlight is not for him, he would’ve insisted that Koutarou does not use a condom - they’re apparently on the same page about kids and if Keiji does not do it quickly, he will back down and not do anything about it ever again because he’s a chicken. That has been the cycle for the past few months, rinse and repeat - it’s one more thing that Keiji wishes for and it is reasonably within reach, but because he often denies himself the things he wants out of fear that he doesn’t actually deserve them he backs down before anything can be done. Koutarou would give him the world, _has_ given him the world because he loves him, and that love has been reciprocated tenfold from the very moment Koutarou confessed his feelings so many years ago.

His brain must be working loudly because Koutarou stops and looks at him, asks in that small voice he does for moments that require it, “are you not feeling it?”. And dear lord, Keiji always has, sex with his husband is great even within its basic confines, he means it when he says that it works for them no matter how much Kozume teases him, he knows that it’s all in good fun between them. At the moment though Keiji doesn’t think he’d be able to cross that line, his mind is too busy that trying to focus on feeling good is nigh impossible. He tells Koutarou as much, apologizes because although it has been always established between them that they can stop at any minute, blue balls aren’t nice either. He still offers to get Koutarou off because he wouldn’t mind doing that, but instead his husband kisses his forehead, pulls out and makes his way to the bathroom, _I can finish on my own, you go to sleep Keiji. We’ll talk in the morning, love you_.

+

And so the next morning, thankfully a Sunday, they talk.

Keiji pours out his heart for Koutarou to see, to pick it back up if he’d be willing to - he always is - and Koutarou listens. How his insecurities make his stomach churn and twist in painful ways, how he wishes that he could just do whatever he wants without thinking of the what if’s - almost immediately Koutarou tries to reassure him that it all would be fine, they don’t need a child that is biologically theirs, but Keiji had long thought about their options and he _wants_ that for them, wants a child that looks like both of them, even vaguely in the way all babies do because their tiny precious little faces haven’t settled into specific features at all. He tells Koutarou as much, explains as best as he can his thought process and although he doubts his husband fully gets it, he knows that he’s making his best effort to understand.

Koutarou holds his hands throughout the whole outburst accompanied by tears that years after the fact Keiji would realize weren’t only his own. They’re under a blanket in the big sofa they have in the living room because mid-March is still cold, but it’s too late in the morning to still be in bed. It’s one of those moments where Koutarou plays the more reasonable person, much like when he became an ‘ordinary ace’. When Keiji stops talking and outright babbling half coherent sentences Koutarou points out the extra room painted in white, light filtering from the translucent curtains they ended up not using in their own bedroom because they enjoy sleeping in late on Sundays, how he has been setting aside some money in case they ever talked it out. Koutarou mentions once more he’s fine being Mocha’s proud dog-dad but he says it laughing, to make Keiji laugh as well and succeeds. He seems to have arrived to the same conclusions Keiji did, at any rate - they have done just fine as Mocha’s dog-dads, even if she is a spoiled little brat that tries to manipulate Suzumeda into giving her treats.

After a while Keiji opens his phone’s calculator and Koutarou an excel sheet on his own, they have work to do if they want this to work, finances to settle and consider, prepare for worst case scenarios and how they will go about it. It’s still not a one hundred percent in stone thing they agreed to, but for now they have settled onto trying, are perfectly aware that because of HRT the chances are low, Keiji dreads coming off his medications but knows it would be a necessity at some point or another. He will have to talk to his doctor about how to proceed though surprisingly that’s the part he’s least worried about - the doctor Keiji has been seeing since arriving in Nishinomiya about two and a half months ago - and thus limited to only two visits so far - had been recommended from his very much medicine field worker parents. His parents wouldn’t have sent him to a doctor that would, he doesn’t know, be a raging bigot. Their relationship might not be at its best, but Keiji knows his parents only want the best for him, he’s thankful for that.

+

Luck isn’t always on Keiji’s side, but as it turns out, it usually is on Koutarou’s. It’s almost shockingly hilarious how barely two months later a positive pregnancy test rests on the bathroom sink - Keiji will be forever miffed at his western bathroom, _blast it_ \- only to be accompanied by three more half an hour later. It’s wild that the four tests are positive, but Keiji will not be fooled because he knows those things aren’t completely accurate and, despite the amount of tests he used, he settles onto getting a blood test as soon as possible to get a definitive answer. He buries in the trash bin the last three tests and rinses the first one, pockets it to put it away somewhere Koutarou won’t find it just yet, not until Keiji gets the blood test done. If it was a false positive and gave both of them hope for something that won’t happen - yet - Keiji wouldn’t be able to live with himself, in his own usual dramatic way of making things with simple solutions more complicated than they have to be. It’s part of who he is, really.

It helps that Koutarou lets him have his privacy and probably doesn’t even know how many or which shirts Keiji even has, even this many years deep into their relationship. He also doesn’t often look around Koutarou’s things because of how much trust they have in the other, only opens that side of the closet when it’s cold and he wants to ‘steal’ one of his husband’s hoodies. Now, Keiji is not exactly small - he knows that people in their heads tend to picture him smaller than he actually is, only to remember how tall and broad he truly is - the thing is, however, that Koutarou is even taller and broader, meaning that his hoodies are big even on Keiji. The benefits of having an actual Olympian athlete as husband.

(Keiji often thinks, though not as much anymore, how he could have kept playing volleyball if he had wanted to. More than once he’s been told he had the skills to go pro, that he was good enough to make it onto the big leagues, but Keiji knows better now. Even if he had been that good, which he’s only halfway sure of, a volleyball court was not for him beyond what school offered. Even if he’s not working in what he truly wanted he still got to major in college in what he truly wanted - Koutarou never judged him, never questioned him on why he dropped volleyball as soon as he graduated from Fukurodani. It’s almost as if he understood without Keiji telling him anything at all, but at this point Keiji wouldn’t put it past Koutarou.)

He makes the medical appointment needed to get blood testing and waits - both for the actual appointment, and then for the results to come back. He tries to keep it hidden from Koutarou, but since Keiji is physically incapable of settling down when something is bugging him he keeps vibrating with excitement and uncertainty, and also because his husband knows him from head to toe so well that trying to hide something from him isn’t easy, even when Koutarou has trouble reading in between lines sometimes. He’s gotten a lot better at it with the years.

That week or so Keiji has to wait is nearly torturous, and his stomach is often upset in the mornings - that only leads to more suspicion from Koutarou, but he doesn’t mention anything when he brings water to Keiji after puking his guts out at six am sharp. It’s only then that it occurs to him that Koutarou has two older sisters, one of whom has two children that Keiji’s husband absolutely adores - Koutarou has been taken with his nephew and niece from the moment he found out his middle sister was expecting, both the first and second time. Keiji can’t be sure because he has never asked, but it’s entirely possible that his husband is aware of symptoms that come with pregnancy thanks to one of his sisters. It would explain why he looks at him with such understanding eyes even when Keiji looks like absolute crap after emptying his stomach.

Still, he waits for the blood test to have a definitive answer - for all he knows, he could just have a particularly strong stomach bug that only acts up early in the morning. He’s deeply aware of how ridiculous and in denial that sounds, but thinking otherwise leads to hope for something that Keiji can’t be sure will happen at all. There’s also the fact that something could go wrong _after_ he gets confirmation, but that train of thought is too dark even for him - and that, in itself, shows him that he’s allowing himself to hope. Years of chasing after Bokuto Koutarou and being by his side have rubbed off on him, his unending but much more reasonable than people give him credit for optimism a rock that instead of sinking him on a sea of despair grounds him instead. He can’t help but let the literature major loose sometimes.

He picks up the envelop with his blood test from the clinic on his way back home after a particularly gruesome day at work, his mangaka falling into despair because she’s not quite sure how to progress her story - Keiji rubs her back and brings her the good kind of coffee, not the one from the kitchen for employees, but the kind from the coffee shop two squares down where you have to wait in line for twenty minutes on a good day, maybe an hour on a bad one. He says “Inoue-san, why don’t we work over this hurdle during the weekend? Take tomorrow off, I won’t tell the superiors,” and that has the exact intended effect. She grabs her things, thanks him for the coffee and shares with him some cookies her girlfriend made the day before, thought he could use something sweet with how pale he looks.

Keiji opens the envelop on the train and thanks the gods - whichever of them is listening to him and has him in their good graces - that he’s currently sitting because he could’ve fallen on his ass otherwise. It reads in a clear, impersonal font in black ink _5 weeks pregnant, blood levels normal for the patient’s condition_ , and scribbled in his doctor’s messy handwriting _please set up appointment asap_. He knows it says that because he tries taking a picture that won’t reveal anything else and sends it to his mother, asks her to tell him what his doctor’s handwriting says, but rather than only getting that answer it gets him his mother bombarding him with questions as to why he has to set up a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. He promises to tell her later.

First he has to get home and tell Koutarou.

+

Keiji won’t bother with the details of his pregnancy because those should be privy to himself and arguably his husband, but safe to say it was good, as good as it could be. Some days he felt like a ravenous beast, some days he couldn’t let anyone look at him. Such is the duality hormones bring - even then, it’s all fine. He gets to finally furnish that extra room like the nursery he saw months ago, not the exact same because that’s impossible, but it gets pretty dang close. Koutarou for his own part glows as much as he allegedly does, tells people that really this is Keiji’s baby, he just helped with a little ingredient to the mix - all the hard work is being done by Koutarou’s lovely, currently somewhat grumpy husband. It’s not a lie, but Keiji nonetheless feels a little awkward at being put on the spotlight around their friends, family and acquaintances.

As for Koutarou’s fans, they hardly even know about Keiji in first place - Koutarou keeps their private lives away from his public Instagram account. All they know is that Koutarou is married and thus unavailable because of the ring he proudly wears, if it were up to him he would shout at the seven winds his love for Keiji. He also knows it would make his husband deeply uncomfortable, so he settles with being able to show how much he loves Keiji in other ways, just for the two of them to see. (And occasionally their friends and family, but they’re used to it already.)

+

Bokuto Haruka is welcomed into the world on January the 4th, almost precisely on time if such a calculation could be done. Her little squished up face doesn’t give much away, but anyone with eyes can tell that she takes after Keiji much more than she does after Koutarou - the latter, for his own part, is absolutely delighted. Her eyes are definitely from the Akaashi side of the family, as is her hair, but that nose is a Bokuto one. Not much else can be said, mostly because babies just happen to look like that.

She weighs perhaps as much as a jug of milk, or something else in their fridge, their pantry, their bathroom cabinets. Keiji is almost sure Mocha weighs far more than Haruka, and he’s used already to carrying Mocha around because with an actual human baby on the way the dog started behaving even more like a spoiled child - almost as if she knew that her time as being the family’s baby was up. Quite hilarious to see, if you ask Keiji. He can’t really think of Mocha though, not when he looks at Koutarou with their daughter in his arms, sleeping peacefully after she showed everyone in the clinic just how well-developed her lungs are. Both of them have cried enough for a lifetime in the past thirty hours or so of labor and other mildly - only mildly? - disgusting birth things, but Keiji knows that it is only the first of many times they’ll get overcome with emotion looking at their daughter.

She’s perfect, and they wouldn’t have her any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'no plan' by hozier.
> 
> \- the ht thunderstorms are a fictional version of the jt thunders, just like the msby black jackals are based off the panasonic panthers.  
> \- i did so much research on cultural stuff that didn't end up using, so i might write more of this lil verse if people like it??  
> \- i will likely delete my previous haikyuu!! series because i wrote that in a hurry and i have changed much of the way i structured it :3c


End file.
